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How to Make Muffins

Muffins are a great treat any time of the day. Fresh from the oven, these baked delights are just as good at breakfast as they are at afternoon tea.

Learning how to make muffins is one of the easiest baking tasks to master. It’ll take you about 10 minutes prep time and another 25 minutes cooking. About the only special equipment you’ll need is a muffin tin.

Culinary Creativity

The muffins you make are really only limited by your culinary creativity. From blueberry or banana muffins to more exotic combinations like raspberry and white chocolate, you’ll find that the basic muffin recipe below will accommodate just about anything you can throw at it. Just remember that if you’re adding wet flavouring ingredients like lemon juice or some particularly soggy fruit you’ll need to reduce the amount of milk you use.

Basic Muffin Recipe

Ingredients:

2 cups plain flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup of butter (you can substitute ½ a cup of vegetable oil but better gives a better taste)

1 cup of brown sugar (use a granular sugar like Demerara.)

¾ cup of milk

2 eggs

Method:

Cream the butter and sugar together.

Beat in the eggs.

Mix in the milk.

Place all the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, make a well in the middle and fold in the liquid mixture using a knife until everything is only just mixed. The secret to making delicious crumbly muffins is to mix as little as possible. Too much mixing will bruise the gluten in the flour and make your muffins chewy.

Gently fold in your flavouring ingredients (blueberries etc.)

Grease a muffin tray and spoon in the mix so that it fills the cups about three quarters full.

Bake at 200˚C for 25 minutes.

Bon Appetit

The time you spend learning how to make muffins will pay off handsomely when your friends or family are treated to the sweet, warm, crumbly flavours of your latest muffin creation.